Gloves come in many varieties, each designed to protect a person's hand from some sort of hazard without overly impairing the person's manual dexterity. For example, insulated ski gloves protect a skier's hands from moisture and low temperatures while allowing the skier to grip ski poles. Latex gloves protect doctors and other health care providers from external contamination while allowing them to handle small, delicate surgical tools, and also prevent the patient from being contaminated by microorganisms on the hands of the health care provider. Leather gloves protect a person's hand from abrasion, thorns and heavy loading while allowing the person to grip and move heavy or rough-surfaced items. Finally, chain-mail gloves protect a person's hand from being cut by knives.
Gloves usually are a compromise between adequate protection and manual dexterity. A glove's design and the material from which it is built determine the glove's characteristics. Thus, a large glove built with heavy materials provides a lot of protection but impairs manual dexterity. Examples of this type of glove include ski gloves, which tend to be large and are made of several layers including a liner, and insulation layer, and an outer shell, and leather work gloves, which are large and made with thick, heavy leather to provide much protection. In contrast to a large and heavy glove, a small, tight-fitting glove made with thin, lightweight materials provides less physical protection but more manual dexterity. For example, surgeon's gloves are tight-fitting and made with thin, lightweight materials such as latex. The surgeon's glove allows much manual dexterity but acts only as a barrier against contaminated fluids and contaminated contact surfaces. The glove's thin construction does not permit it to provide much protection against such mechanical hazards as piercing or cutting with surgical instruments.
While existing gloves protect the hands from a number of environmental conditions, none effectively provide puncture resistance, especially from contaminated needles, without impairing manual dexterity; gloves that do provide puncture-resistance tend to be thick, heavy and awkward. There is thus a need for a lightweight and relatively thin puncture-resistant glove.